Kasich's talk in Davos attracts attention

Friday

Jan 25, 2013 at 12:01 AMJan 25, 2013 at 12:12 PM

DAVOS, Switzerland - John Kasich's first speech on a global stage as Ohio governor opened the door for investments in the state. Kasich addressed a room of chief executives and investors at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, yesterday as part of a panel discussion on advanced manufacturing. After the panel adjourned, a Swiss venture capitalist heaped high praise on Kasich and later spoke privately with the governor, while a Daimler executive agreed to meet with Kasich back in Ohio.

Joe Vardon, The Columbus Dispatch

DAVOS, Switzerland — John Kasich’s first speech on a global stage as Ohio governor opened the door for investments in the state.

Kasich addressed a room of chief executives and investors at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, yesterday as part of a panel discussion on advanced manufacturing. After the panel adjourned, a Swiss venture capitalist heaped high praise on Kasich and later spoke privately with the governor, while a Daimler executive agreed to meet with Kasich back in Ohio.

As promised, Kasich used his opening remarks during the panel discussion to tout his program designed to better align Ohio’s worker-training programs and education system with employers’ work-force needs. In short, he wants businesses to tell the government what their needs are so that vocational training can be shaped and expanded deeper into the high-school ranks.

Kasich disclosed that the multinational consulting firm Accenture is helping the state create an online program for businesses to divulge their work-force needs to the state more privately — potentially clearing what’s been a roadblock for his program.

Kasich also, as promised, mentioned a little about what he sometimes calls the “Ohio miracle” — or the confluence of the closing of an $8 billion budget deficit in 2011, a jobs sector that’s growing and a predicted $1 billion surplus for the state by June 30.

“There are very few places in the world where we have figured out work-force training,” Kasich said. “This is one of the great demands for businesses today. We want to be one of the first movers, and we believe if we’re a first mover that not only will ‘re-shoring’ occur, but we also believe that we will see a tremendous growth in manufacturing inside of our state.”

Ohio’s added 31,000 manufacturing jobs since Kasich took office in January 2011. The state also had tacked on about 15,000 manufacturing jobs in 2010 — stopping a period of consecutive declines that stretched back to 2000.

“I was impressed by him,” said Steve Koltes, managing partner of Luxembourg-based CVC Capital Partners, who said afterward that he lives in Switzerland and would advise clients to consider investing in Ohio.

“I liked his energy level, his drive to get some things changed,” Koltes said. “If he’s the governor, people should sit down with him and let him make his pitch for Ohio.”

The Republican governor was joined on the panel by Jean-Paul Herteman, chief executive officer of the French Safran Group; Andres Renchler, chief executive of Daimler Trucks and Daimler Buses in Germany; and Anand Sharma, commerce minister of India. The panel uniformly advocated for improvements in how workers are trained to meet employers’ needs.

Sharma, for example, said India will open 15,000 vocational centers to train some 220 million people entering the country’s work force in the next 12 years. Renchler said skill-specific trades such as the auto industry require training that can’t be found in traditional universities and should begin at younger ages.

“(Kasich) made the right statements,” Renchler said. “There’s an obvious need for a practical crafting of the education system in America, and this is somehow missing.”

Renchler said he would meet with Kasich but isn’t considering moving any of Daimler Trucks’ American operations to Ohio yet.

“It was just a statement he made. I would not move operations there just based off of a statement.”Kasich held one-on-one meetings yesterday with Google vice president Sebastian Thrun about Thrun’s model of for-profit remedial and introductory college course offerings in an online program, and with executives with Dow Chemical and Philips. He also attended a dinner for energy companies hosted by Daniel Yergin, an expert in the field.

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who was one of five senators selected to travel to Davos as a delegation to the forum, canceled his trip Wednesday night after it was announced that the entire Senate delegation would stay in Washington for possible votes.